And by “anomaly,” they meant “utterly kerploded.”
Rockets R Hard.
This was the capsule that recently returned from the ISS. It was to be used for an in-flight abort test, but obviously that’s not going to happen. Hopefully they’ll be able to figure out what went wrong. It looked like a friggen’ bomb went off.
Getting close to finished with the Ajax model. Just need to clean up a few bits and do some work on the engine and add some details to the rear of the “spine,” and it’ll be there.
There was some debate about how to deal with the nearly 200 rungs on the side of the vehicle. They are just big enough that simple raised rectangular bumps on the surface would look lame. So the decision as it currently stands is to include two options the builder can choose from. Both build on “troughs” cut in the surface.
1) The simpler option include segments that fit in the troughs and which have molded-in rungs. They simply plug in.
2) The more complex option uses segment plugs with gaps on the side, the end result being that when the plugs are inserted there will be holes in the surface. Into these holes will fit photoetched brass rungs. This will be labor intensive… but the end result should look phenomenal.
Coupled with the clear parts and theoretically easy lightability… this should be a damned spiffy model when finished.
*Something* went wrong during a static test firing of the capsules Super Draco engines. Few details as yet, but this will doubtless set the project back some. Feh.
A piece of Rocketdyne art illustrating something just not quite as possible as they thought at the time: a manned landing on Saturns moon Titan. This dates from prior to (quite likely a decade prior to) 1968 and depicts a terribly 1950’s rocketship standing on its tail in the nicely transparent air of Titan, with Saturn clearly visible in the sky above some modest lower-level atmospheric haze.
This almost certainly does not depict an engineering study, but is simply the result of an aerospace artist at Rocketdyne being let loose to create some PR images.
Razorfist breaks it down for you calmly in ENTIRELY SAFE FOR WORK language*.
*Note: No, it’s not.
After a couple *years* of Democrat party hacks screeching on about “collusion” and “treason,” it has been amazing to watch them pivot not on a dime but on a freakin’ quark to screeching about “obstruction of justice,” with their best evidence being that Trump wants to bring the fraudulent Russiagate investigation to an end…but didn’t actually do anything to make that happen.
One wonders if, after getting the Covington Kids half a billion dollars from the media and celebrities for slandering and libeling them, perhaps the lawyers could go after the people who most vociferously pushed the “collusion” line. I suspect that that would be covered under the 1st Amendment, especially given that Trump is a public figure… but some newly-enriched attack lawyers could tie up Pelosi and Nadler and such in court long enough to impoverish them. I’m usually quite opposed to using lawsuits to simply harass people… but some people just plain suck. Reasoning with them hasn’t worked. Providing evidence hasn’t worked.
Jonathan Frakes describes the Russiagate story for 47 seconds…
The terrorists in question being the IRA.
What’s next? Parachute pants? A-ha dominating MTV? Well… the Russians are getting back into the “threatening the world with nuclear annihilation” groove, so I guess it was only a matter of time.
A model I CAD-mastered for Fantastic Plastic has finally been released… the 1/288 scale Max Valier “Raketenschiff” from 1929. This was a very art deco “rocket ship” designed as a hypersonic trans-Atlantic passenger transport. It was never much more than a notion and some art, but it’s always been a concept I’ve been fond of. Its design is a combination of zeppelin and Colliers Ferry Rocket. Go to Fantastic Plastic and buy a couple.
Well, here’s the entirety of the next few days news cycle…
https://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2019/images/04/18/mueller-report.pdf
Or…
https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf
It’s 139 megabytes, if that’s important to ya.
I’ll probably get around to reading some of it; got stuff to do and slogging through hundreds of pages of something that isn’t science fiction seems like a bore. I’m *sure* that the news media will do a fine job of combing through it and summarizing it accurately and fairly. Right?
For no good reason other than pure curiosity I gathered together all of the “Zaneverse” stories I’ve written and totaled up how many words they have. Assuming a standard of 300 words per novel-sized page… it turns out I’ve cranked out around 1,200 pages. This surprised me and initially impressed me; then I realized that Stephen King could probably bang out a 1,200 page novel in a single drunken weekend and I promptly became less impressed with myself.
The question remains what to do with it all. For a year I tried going through a literary agent to get “Novel 1” published, but he turned out to be a bit of a disappointment (apparently health issues… shrug). One of the short stories was submitted for a sci-fi anthology… but I never heard back, not even a notice of receipt of the manuscript, never mind an acceptance or rejection. Grrr. “Novel 0” is something I’m currently hacking away at, and it is specifically intended to *not* be published; it’s weird and from a literary point of view not needed, in much the same way the “Solo” movie wasn’t needed. However, having the origin story of the main characters put down on paper (so to speak) will help me keep things straight. Plus, I just wanted to do it.
Anybody know any literary agents who might want to be in on the ground floor of the next publishing powerhouse, sure to leave Harry Potter in the dust? Self publishing is always an option, but given that I have neither skill nor talent in the area of effective self promotion, that’s not terribly appealing.
Latest update on the Ajax, showing the location of ladder rungs on the surface. On the final model these will likely be molded-in raised rectangular solids. At 1/200 scale, the rung would be *really* tiny (they’re about 1/12 of an inch wide and of course much thinner than that) and could only be done via photoetch; and while that has the potential to look spectacular, holy crap it’d be a nightmare.
Also: note that there are a number of parts shown in light blue. These are parts that are meant to be cast in clear resin. The fuselage and wings are hollow, allowing ready access to clear parts for those who wish to light the model with LEDs. The walkways are “troughs” with the “ceilings” being separate flat parts to be cast in clear. The main parts of the walkways need detailing and will not have the open doorways.
